Speaking as Tui published its third quarter results on Wednesday (13 August), chief executive Sebastian Ebel said that as of early August, the UK was 89% sold for summer 2025 – up one percentage point compared with summer 2024 and ahead of bookings group-wide, which are down by 2% compared with the same point last year.
Ebel indicated there would be no need to dump unsold summer capacity. “We are 90% sold for the summer, which includes October," he said. "We are not as aggressive in the last minute as maybe others are.” He added late sales would be important “but not as important as in the past”.
For the coming winter season, the UK is the most advanced of Tui’s markets with 31% of the programme sold. This is in line with the previous winter, but Tui said selling prices were higher.
However, Ebel said the Middle East conflict was affecting sales to the region. “We have seen great offers to the UAE at the moment – I expect this will normalise in the autumn," he continued.
Looking ahead, Ebel said he was keen to extend some destinations into the shoulder season and had been in talks with local businesses and officials to persuade them it was worth staying open in October and November. Tui’s global selling platform made this viable, he explained, because customers could be sourced from many markets.
“I very much believe there are customers that will go more and more into the summer season, because the weather in Greece, Antalya, is most likely very, very good. We are in constant communication with hotels to do that. We see ourselves as the initiator.”
Ebel also signalled a move for Tui into offering more multi-day tours. “We will offer the customer a lot of pre-packaged round trips. The customer can choose the components. We want to participate in a big market where we have not been.”
City breaks would be suited to this, he said, describing how he had been “overwhelmed” by the number of tourists on a recent trip to London and had seen the opportunity to package hotels and itineraries. “Tui has not been really strong in city trips. This is untapped business for Tui to make the shoulder season stronger.”
A key component to this type of sales will be Tui’s app. Ebel said Tui’s sales via its app in all markets now total 10.5%. “The benchmark could be 50%,” he added.
